


unfathomable distance and all the other things he won’t acknowledge

by scintillio_coll



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Female Pronouns for Pidge | Katie Holt, M/M, meandering nonsense, slowburn, this is apparently what i do now
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-30
Updated: 2018-03-30
Packaged: 2019-04-14 20:02:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,638
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14143479
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/scintillio_coll/pseuds/scintillio_coll
Summary: “Don’t worry, Keith!” Coran’s disembodied voice echoes, “Help is on the way!”With that, a rope drops from the ceiling and he watches as Lance descends gracefully, unable to resist adding in a few unnecessary flourishes. Coran calls him 'Loverboy' and Lance shouts, “I’m coming for you, Keith!” and when Keith feels his face go hot, he tells himself it’s from how embarrassing they’re all being.





	unfathomable distance and all the other things he won’t acknowledge

**Author's Note:**

> I started this after S4 in the hopes of finding closure for myself and because I was convinced Keith’s near kamikaze would have some emotional repercussions. It never became something I liked and it pretty much wallowed. 
> 
> Then S5 came and, I don't know, I loved it more than I thought I would and I more or less wrote this navigating by cave poetry.

Keith doesn’t understand why he blows up in front of everyone. It’s all so foreign. The group goes rigid and his breath is ragged and Shiro rolls out some platitude about how being a team _works,_ that you need to _want_ _it._

Honestly, that make no sense to Keith. Even he doesn't want it most of the time, is wary of the others at best and outright resentful at worst (and more often). The only good thing about his meltdown is that at least Lance isn’t around to witness it. 

The world around him is too clean and bright and metal, he keeps trying to find his bearings but nothing holds a shape. 

Hunk wants to bail, too, and it seems so bizarre until he remembers what he has to run home to and it makes a lot more sense. All things considered, participating and, probably, dying in an intergalactic space war isn’t really worse than a life of under-educated, ramshackle, desert hovel seclusion. 

More interesting, at the very least. 

He isn’t given more than a moment to mull that over before the explosion bellows through the Castle’s halls. 

They find Lance, surreally dusty and vacant and covered in blood. And just like that, their abstract and theoretical martyrdom gets way realer. The possibility of never again seeing Lance with his eyes open, that the ridiculous amount of space his voice takes up will go empty, is suddenly the most unfair thing Keith has ever been presented.  

The other boy might be a dumbass ( _and_ an asshole _and_ a pain in the ass) but he is dying, right now. He’s young and bony and shockingly resilient in that blue armor. And he has way more to live for than a shitty cabin with no heat and warped floors.

It’s then that he figures it out, sprinting through the doors with Allura. 

He’s not used to having things to lose.  

*

That means it starts a lot earlier than he realized, that he cared about him long before he was able to acknowledge it. 

Even before the hand gripping his goes limp and Lance sags against him, losing his temporarily won grasp on consciousness. 

Hunk and Coran radio with good news and Allura’s shoulders dip with relief. 

Keith keeps his stance wide, knees slightly bent, and lifts with his legs. Lance’s arm flops off his chest as he straightens out, knocking against Keith’s shin as he starts down the hall. He jerks at the sudden, unexpected touch, glancing down.

Lance’s face is slack, his mouth gaping, lips pulled in a weird distortion of his regular smile, and Keith tries once again to remember him. Remember him from Earth, from the Garrison, the simulator or the classroom. 

He’s bright, in every sense of the word, loud and clanging and close. And _warm-_ literally, heat is radiating through the layers between them. It seems impossible that they ever shared the same space without him taking note. He’s been more or less a hot poker in Keith’s side since the moment they broke Earth’s atmo. 

He doesn’t _,_ though, remember him, that is. And really, what does it matter _now_ who they used to be? He’s pretty sure that tall guy from the Garrison wouldn’t have thrown himself in front of a bomb. Whoever Keith used to be wasn’t so desperate to be a team. 

 _Think about what kinda man you wanna be, son,_ Iverson had scolded sadly to Keith’s back as he was escorted off campus.

They’ve been in space all of five minutes and Keith is already changing. He can see it and feel it and hear it in the way his voice went wavy with emotion, berating Pidge into staying because he still doesn’t know how to _ask_. It makes his skin feel tight like it’s actually shedding, makes him halfway long for that shack in the desert for no reason beyond it was known and he was alone. 

Even Lance is already kind of unrecognizable, seems bigger and toothier and kinder than first impressions allowed. Even like this: a silent, hurt, and inert thing that can’t smile. He seems to take up so much of Keith’s space. 

*

Later, when they watch the security footage from the bridge, Allura gasps and Shiro _humphs_ and Coran says breathlessly, “He saved my life.” 

Keith just turns on his heal and strides back to the infirmary, “He’s an idiot.” 

*

Pidge stays and the team remains, or is really born or something. Lance forgets but, well, so did Keith. Maybe they can be closer to even now. 

They all pick at each other, more siblings on a road trip than soldiers in a space-war, but that’s probably what makes it survivable. At times Hunk is too soft and Pidge is too sharp and Lance so smooth it somehow grates. The wonder and tragedy of _team_ is they have each other and it’s _permanent_.

Keith realizes it pretty early: the fact that this won’t be a quick, quirky adventure, no jaunt around the stars before skipping home for graduation. Their service is indefinite, every second of any possible future has been completely swallowed up by the rising tide of catastrophe. The one that, _awesome,_ only they can hold back.   

They’re maturing as fast as they can…just not fast enough that he doesn't take a mean kind of pleasure in mocking Lance in those handcuffs, pelting him with asteroid goo, and clobbering him in training. He’s only grown enough to admit to himself that, maybe, he’s let Lance become a _thing._

“I could almost believe you...like him,” Shiro says with false mildness after a morning session, setting the training deck back to rights as Keith wipes up stray droplets of blood. 

He instantly glances up to where Lance is sitting cross-legged across the room, wrapping Pidge’s jammed thumb in gauze. 

“It’s pretty obvious I don’t,” he mutters grouchily. 

“You treat him differently than the others,” Shiro points out.

Pidge shakes her wrist when Lance is done and he rises from the floor, hefting himself up with one long arm. He meets Keith’s gaze and holds it, grinning and dipping into a dramatic bow. Keith turns away, overcome by the notion that they’d both just unintentionally admitted to something. 

“He treats me different, too.”

Shiro is quiet for a moment and it feels like his thoughts, the things he’s not saying, are so heavy they have their own gravity. He weighs his words like they are both precious and volatile. 

“That’s kinda…my point,” Shiro’s lips quirk but he doesn’t go on. 

*

Seeing his dad again doesn’t feel like he thought it would, even in a surreal, unreal, dream world. It takes him by surprise. His lungs more or less collapse and he feels like he’s being squeezed to death. 

After, he doesn’t tell Shiro about any of it, but he can’t hide it from Red, can’t keep it off his face and from cracking his voice when Hunk brings it up. 

Over the years, his dad has dissolved into just a series of misplaced and involuntary associations. A southern drawl, the smell of sawdust, the bayard callouses that materialized on his own hands. His father had callouses, he felt them when he tucked him in at night. 

But like the barebones cabin they once shared, he’d left him to be reclaimed by the desert. Keith had almost forgotten he had father at all.

Not his mother, though. No, Keith had never forgotten her. Had never forgotten he had nothing to forget. The face she doesn't have seems to constantly haunt his periphery. 

He told the Blade he already knew who he was, but honestly, he’s never been less sure. 

* 

Here are some things Keith is good at: 

Close combat, evasive piloting, whistling, the 100 meter dash, changing tires, starting fires, sewing, shoe repair, shop lifting, exit strategies, cooking eggs. 

Things he’s not: leading. Being a _leader,_ no matter what Shiro said. It doesn’t come natural and it doesn’t feel right and, regardless of the lion’s strength, he is going to implode and suck them all up with him. Like the black holes they’re _always_ about to fall into. 

And cutting his own hair. Keith is absolutely shit at cutting his own hair. 

*

He doesn’t remember eating. Not once. He doesn’t remember sleeping or showering or snapping on his unmatched red armor, the color contrasting with the black in a frustrating way. He can’t say if he talks or drinks or intakes air but he must have. 

Those first days without Shiro… are remembered in a bit of a whiteout haze. 

He does know that he dreamt a lot of his father. Horrible, jerky, violent scenes of anxiety and confusion. His father focuses and drifts and nothing stays still. Sometimes something is coming for them _or-,_ no, his father is coming for _him_ , _or-_ no, Keith is coming for his _father._

They leave him a giant sore open to the elements and it shows. He starts to be as reckless with everyone else’s life as his own. 

The static begins to lift, though, somewhere along the way, counteracted by yet another plant’s constant electrical snapping and, equally, Lance’s voice. It’s familiar and sturdy and reminds him that if the fool is going to blindly dash into certain death again, it won’t be for him.  

 _You could have died, you jerk,_ he abruptly thinks, unsure if he means _just now_ or _back then._

He doesn’t pursue it too much. 

He puts off sleep for as long as he can, braces for nightmares as he drops like a millstone into bed. 

Instead, he finds himself more of a kid again, curled up his old twin, some narrow, cheap thing that creaked with each fidget. Every single night, his dad would fold this gigantic and ancient family quilt in half and drape it over him, the weight of it strangely reassuring. 

Except in this dream, just this once, it might be Lance with the blanket. 

 *

When Shiro reemerges from the bruised unknown, he wants to cry for the first time since the last time. But not from relief, nothing so simple. 

It’s more like a growing pain, radiating out from his bones. A reminder that for every inch they have staggered forward, stacking on scars with each hard-earned step towards adulthood, they have miles to go.

He really just wants to know what kind of man he’s becoming.   

*

He could have gotten away with a group hug and a couple tears. 

Still, it’s almost natural when he ends up at Lance’s door. 

He is already in his room. He sits tensely on the edge of his bunk, elbows on his knees, arms propping up his chin like the stress of too many sudden changes has exhausted him. 

“What happened to ‘leaving the math to Pidge’?” 

Here’s the truth: he wants Red back. He does. More than he cares about Lance’s feelings. Almost, shamefully, more desperately than he needs answers. He’s imagined every scene where they reunite and he finally remembers _who he is_ because flying her was certainly the closest he ever got.

And it’s not whatever annoying, invasive affection he’s discovering for the other boy that’s keeping him from her. Keith is a faster pilot and stronger fighter. He still knows they’re better off with Lance.

“I never wanted Black. You know that.”

Lance laughs but it’s low and sad. He finally stands, unfolding with too many endless angles, too much new height crowding him, always, even in what should be a comfortable place.

“Man, _none of us_ are getting what we want.”

Keith did the math this time, alright? A hundred million times, once for every galaxy that he’s shot through, and the amount of space he takes up, here, _in_ space, is simply not as much as Lance. 

He wants to strangle something when that makes him think of his father.

Instead, he leans in an inch, his face just another electrical storm, “Aren’t you? Five lions, five Paladins, right, Lance?”

He gets a merciful instant where he thinks he can take that back, realizes what a wholly untrue and twisted thing it was to say, before he’s punched squarely in the jaw.

“Is this what I kept you alive for?” Lance hisses, stumbling a little himself from the blow, eyes wild.

Keith spits and there’s red in it, a carmine smudge against the otherwise pristine floor, and drags the back of one hand across his mouth.

The air in Lance’s throat catches, like when an intake on the lions shakes loose, eyes unrecognizable but at least as brilliant as ever. His expression sours and he clenches his jaw as if to stop himself from saying more.

Keith’s muffled footsteps barely echo as he leaves, his tongue swipes at his split lip, and he doesn’t have an answer.

* 

He realizes that the Castle’s time reads pretty early when he brings up the com screen, sullenly jabbing in their frequency. He doesn’t really expect anyone to answer, maybe Coran is already up, but otherwise he can dump the new intel into an encrypted message. 

An unmistakable mess of brown hair appears, more disheveled and unkempt than usual, and he can’t help the swoop and crackle of surprise in his stomach. 

“Mornin’,” Lance says with a tiny, lopsided smile that doesn’t go near his eyes.

“Oh,” Keith manages eloquently, “Hey.” 

He hasn’t been gone long, barely moved out of the Castle a whole week, but for some reason, it feels like he hasn’t seen Lance in a decade. His voice, still dry and gravelly from sleep, already seems older. Keith is struck by the thought that no matter what they’ve all been through together, accomplished and survived, they’ve stopped walking the exact same path. 

It feels like grit in his teeth. 

So he let’s his gaze sink back to the blinking screen and initializes the data transfer. 

“Pidge is…out,” Lance eventually says with a voice that’s annoyingly level. “I thought she might be checking in.” 

Keith let’s himself meet his gaze, recognizing the tip of an olive branch for what it is, “Where is she?” 

Lance smiles again, still restrained, “Following that lead to her brother.”

Looking at him produces a quiet wrenching inside that has never been there before, no matter how bad their relationship had been, inspires a feeling of guilt he’s pretty sure he _doesn’t_ deserve. 

“Good for her,” Keith nods, “I hope…let me know how it goes, k?” 

Lance’s eyes narrow, he seems suspicious, or maybe just cautious, either way Keith doesn’t like it directed towards him. Lance simply responds, “I can do that.”

He watches through the screen as he chews his lip and glances around the empty and dim bridge like he could make someone else materialize through awkward will alone. 

“I gotta…” Lance clears his throat where Keith would have probably huffed. “About when you left-“

“Stop,” he interrupts, and in his rush to reassure lets loose one of those exasperating truths he can’t contemplate, “You’ve always been good at knocking sense into me.”

There’s a faint beep, the cartoon swirly-eyed Pidge popping up to announce the transfer’s completion. 

Lance is looking down and Keith imagines he’s standing there his blue lion slippers. He wonders what Lance, what they’ll all, be doing that day. Will they be in danger, get hurt, win the fight, form Voltron, eat goo, trip on the mice? If Hunk will cry or Lance will flirt or Pidge will find her brother? 

He cuts off the train of thought before it can spiral further, “Later, Lance.” 

“Hey Keith,” he’s looking at him again and Keith is stupidly relieved that he’s at least said his name, “Please don’t do anything I wouldn’t let you.” 

The connection breaks and the screen goes blank.  

*

Blade missions are deemed a success on a different scale than Voltron missions. Keith never gets used to leaving people behind, asking for someone else’s sacrifice, stepping over corpses at the same moment he’s congratulated. 

He keeps fidgeting around like he’s got a bone out of its socket, convinced that eventually he’ll force it into place and it’ll all feel natural, like the birthright Kolivan seems to think it is. Mostly, it leaves him vaguely lonely and homesick. He oscillates between wanting the Castle, obviously, but also the desert. For no reason beyond it was known, he was alone, and back then there was no one to miss.

He hears about the shows a few weeks before finally getting to watch one, so he’s at least half prepared for the absurd theatrics of it all. As Coran’s manic narration fills his narrow bunk, he gives himself a moment to consider that at least here, he’s not putting up with _that_. 

Pidge appears to be in physical pain, reciting the ridiculous script through clenched teeth. Hunk, the saint, seems torn between genuine humiliation and good-natured thrill. Shiro comes across just as upright and courageous as always, which is how Keith is sure he’s not even acting.

He knew it was coming, but his stomach still goes all twitchy and icy when Coran introduces ‘Keith’ to the stage, and a teeny tiny traitorous part of him wants to chuck the tablet against the slopping, scuffed wall. Because, c’mon, he’s already lost his lion and his armor and his bunk and his _team,_ the one that would actually mourn him, that is. Now he’s gotta give up his _name,_ too?

He shakes that off before it can root too deep, remembers that throwing electronics is definitely something he’s matured past.  

When he focuses back on the screen, ’Keith’ has gotten herself into some trouble, and he lets out an unrestrained chuckle at Allura’s glaringly fake battle with… _what are those supposed to be?_ Vines? Robot arms? Haunted pool noodles? 

“ _Don’t worry, Keith!”_ Coran’s disembodied voice echoes, “ _Help is on the way!”_

With that, a rope drops from the ceiling and Lance descends gracefully, unable to resist adding in a few unnecessary flourishes. Coran calls him _Loverboy_ and Lance shouts, “I’m coming for you, Keith!” and when Keith feels his face go hot, he tells himself it’s from how embarrassing they’re all being.  

And if that treacherous, childish part of him thinks, _You don’t even know where I am, you jerk,_ he definitely rolls it to the back with all the other things he won’t acknowledge. 

*

He’s pretty calm when the moment comes, when he’s been given all the time that will be given to become whoever he’ll become. It’s an easy choice: one man or half a system. So no choice at all. 

But that’s just math, just straight numbers. To be honest, he’d do this for any one of them. He’d be happy to. 

He knows that Pidge will continue to be brilliant and Hunk always kind. Shiro will be unflinchingly brave while Allura and Coran bear it with all the resolve of people who’ve lost too much already. 

And Lance…he’ll be annoying and obvious and dramatic. And he’ll keep the others enduringly safe.

A calloused hand at the end of the day. 

If Keith has any regrets in this, it’s that he’s wearing black instead of red.

*

The door slides shut smoothly as he lets himself out of the bridge, waiting until no one is looking. Let Shiro and Kolivan see to the Galran prince. The tide of the war has shifted in an unforeseeable way but all Keith can think about is getting out of his suit and _breathing._  

He doesn’t hear the approach behind him until Lance calls his name, turning in time to catch a glimpse of the taller boy before he’s halted with a firm grip on his upper arm.

“What was that?” Lance simply asks. 

When Keith finally looks at Lance directly, he almost heaves at the pale, drawn, and numb look on his face. It’s like when he carried him on Arus, down this very same hallway, desperate not to lose something he didn’t even ask for.

Keith is tired, and sad, and angry for no reason- because shouldn’t he be so _relieved_ to be alive? That the day was saved for another group hug and petty fight and long long stare from across the room? Couldn’t it be enough that what was _meant_ was _well?_

“You threw yourself in front of a bomb.”

Lance’s face goes even more blank. A kind of shocked, stricken stillness that refuses to convey anything. 

“For just _one_ of us,” Keith reminds him. 

“Just _…one of us?_ ” Lance stutters out.

Keith shrugs and shakes his head and every one the thoughts he refused to let see light suddenly jockey for attention, “I can do the same for you.”  

Lance’s emotional reactions have never been consistent things, but Keith is still surprised when he backs up a pace and eyes go unfocused with a split mix of sadness, curiosity, and confusion.

“We started this to finish it,” Keith eventually whispers when it looks like Lance will either cry or punch him again. 

He flinches when Lance’s arm starts to rise, bracing for a blow. But instead he simply fists the hair brushing at the back of Keith’s neck and squeezes until it hurts a little. 

“And we started this _together._ ”

It feels like light and gravity distort around Lance as he strides away. 

*

The Blade never puts the individual over the mission. The self-destructive part of Keith gets that. Maybe found comfort in it. They are uncounted entities with matching knives and identical masks. 

But they aren’t a team. They don’t have a home.

*

He gets hungry, sleeps ok, has normal if not stilted conversations with the rest of the team about what he almost did. No, that’s not right. What he _did_ do _._

As Allura clasps his gloved hands and Coran dabs his eyes, muttering something about a relapse of the Slipperies, he wonders if it’s odd that he’s handling his near nonexistence better than the responsibility of leadership. It’s another intruding thought that he doesn’t give much attention.

Lance avoids him. He does it well enough that Keith could never call it out even if he felt that sort of spiteful need. But every room he’s not in contains a Lance shaped hole, when he slips out the door, he leaves behind an invisible eddy, all the oxygen and other molecules slowly draining out with him. 

There’s another thought that he let’s roll to the back of his head, a desert pebble stuck in his old Earth boots: when he had said _just one of us_ did he mean _you?_

Regardless, he’s happy when Hunk finds him munching on something pretty close to dry cereal the next morning, his presence like a sun lamp.

He helps himself to the flakes after snagging a bowl and some of Kaltenecker’s milk from the cooler and plops down next to Keith.

“You seen Pidge?” he asks lightly, food still in the pockets of his cheeks. 

Hunk shrugs, “Probably fell asleep in her lab.”

“Matt?”

A snort, “Same.” 

“Allura?” 

“Her and Shiro are meeting with the “prisoner,” Hunk rolls his eyes and makes exaggerated finger quotes. Lotor’s presence on the ship was a point of contention, and no one was foolish enough to think he was being held against his will. 

Hunk finishes pouring milk into his breakfast and holds the bottle out. Keith accepts it easily, refilling his glass, “Coran’s usually up by now. And the mice aren’t even begging-“

“You know,” Hunk cuts in, “talking about everyone but Lance is more obvious than just talking about Lance.” A massive shoulder rises in an oddly elegant shrug, “For a space-ninja, you’re not super subtle.”

“So you’ve noticed,” he confirms more than questions. 

Hunk makes a gesture with his spoon that doesn’t actually translate to words and sighs with the seriousness he usually reserved for internal bleeding or war crimes, “You really scared us for a minute there.”

Keith sputters out something that’s half laugh, half offended scoff, “But you’re not avoiding me like I’m covered in _baku_ shit.”

“It’s different,” Hunk purses his lips and gives him a _look,_ like Keith’s being willfully dense.

It’s the first time anyone’s confronted him about the _thing._ How, if he had actually died, everyone there would have lost a _teammate_ and friend and brother but Lance would have lost something _else,_ too. Something more specific yet undefined. 

Hunk just quirks an eyebrow and reaches across them to brush a crumb from Keith’s jacket, “It might help if you were staying.”

*

He’s not, though. Staying, that is. 

He still wants Red back, his bunk and his bayard and the squeak of the mice under his feet. But he still needs answers and that’s speaks to the part of him that yearns for something beyond this war. 

He goes to see Red before shipping out again. The machine keeps him honest.  

The particle barrier is down and he feels her in his head, a warm pressure like a lazy once over, a familiar and friendly  _you._

 _Has too much changed?_  he wonders to himself as he leans against a massive leg,  _From when I was yours?_

The light tap of footsteps sounds behind him, echoing louder as they enter the bay. He can just make out the tinny beat of music from Lance’s earbuds as he strolls in, hesitating when he catches sight of Keith’s red jacket against the red of the lion. 

The music stops and so does Lance, he pulls the headphones out of his ears and looks uncertainly between Keith and the door. The shape of his thoughts are so readable, practically on a ticker tape across his eyes, and Keith can pin point the instant he remembers that Red is _his_ now. He continues crossing the distance between them. 

“Need something?” he asks casually, as if finding Keith here wasn’t a rat’s nest of potential angst. 

“I was looking for you, actually,” he lies easily, so easily that maybe it’s closer to the truth than he thought. 

Lance runs his palm over Red’s foot, now only a couple meters away, “Yeah, heard you guys were heading out.” 

“I didn’t want to leave without saying anything,” Keith murmurs. Lance raises his eyebrows at that, as if he’d heard what Keith really meant, which was _Please don’t punch me again._

“Dude, you don’t have to-” he interrupts himself with a waved hand, which is a very Lance thing to do, “I get it, I know you think I don’t, but I get it. You’re not the only one here whose thought about when your luck will run out, that we’re probably not gonna make it out of this.” Just math, just straight numbers. 

He stares down at Keith and sighs and groans at the same time, it comes out an exasperated but light sound, and leans himself up on the sloping metal beside him, “I would have done the same thing. I guess that’s what I’m saying, so I get it. But Keith, buddy, every time you do something like that, brave and dumb _,_ you _know_ I’m gonna want to save you from yourself.”

He reaches up and pulls on Keith’s mullet, half affectionate, half vengeful, “And it kinda killed me that I was too far away.” 

*

He dreams that he is as he is now, long and scarred up, huddled under his doubled-up quilt, barely able to fit on the skinny mattress when the man beside him takes up so much space.

Lance’s hand threads into the hair at his nape and _tugs,_ his breath and lips brushing on his. 

“Is _this_ what I kept you alive for?” he asks in a voice that staccato and ragged. 

Keith wakes with a small flail and quiet curse that echoes in his tiny bunk. He huffs for the span of a few heartbeats as he drags his hands down his face. 

“Yeah,” he mutters to himself just short of angry, “Should’ve seen that coming.”

 *

He leans back in the pilot’s seat after sending an _all clear_ to base. Krolia slumps in the chair next to him, eyes half-lidded and long form relaxed. 

She looks like him, it isn’t so much an epiphany as Keith’s metaphorical bones finally popping back into place. Strangely, seeing her face just highlights everything in his own that must be his father’s.

Her eyes reopen, peering at the console as a transmission pings through, most likely coordinates to a new rendezvous point. When her stare meets his, too many emotions crawl up his throat, his skin seems to shrink too tight and he’s once again overcome by the sensation of being squeezed to death. 

He reflexively hears Kolivan’s voice in his head, reminding him that feelings have no place here.

But meeting his mom feels exactly like he thought it would: Meaning he feels _everything, at once,_ and suddenly understands why Hunk pukes all the time. 

He’s mad at her. So incredibly mad. Resents her for existing, surviving, for the oxygen she’s using, for the calm way she waited for him to say the word _mother._ The unforgiving part of him wishes he had abandoned her on that base the way she left him and his dad, unmoored and vulnerable. 

He’s elated. She has his eyes, the distinct slope of his nose, seems direct and no-nonsense. He already appreciates the tenor of her voice, her quick thinking, how she saved them from another of his dumb decisions with the all the practiced ease of Lance. 

He’s grieving. Swept up in this tidal wave of brain-rending personal upheaval, finally facing all the desert-dwelling ghosts that won't stop haunting him. 

He feels it all with helpless totality, completely swamped, and tamping that down or suffocating that flame is more impossible than any of the impossible missions he's pulled off. He doesn't even want to.

He thinks again about Kolivan, extolling the virtues of detachment, but halfway through it turns into Iverson’s _what kinda man do you wanna be?_

Without giving it any more thought, he reaches forward and severs the connection. In the same stroke, he hails the Castle, knowing someone will respond with all quickness. 

Krolia glances at him, searching his expression, and smirks a little. 

"I always did enjoy disobeying your grandfather.” 

She grins at his dumbfounded stare, "That's how I got you, after all." 

*

The Castle wormholes to their location, traveling the unfathomable distance between them in a tick. It’s a convenience he missed, wishes all their problems could be solved via Teleduv. 

The team seems relieved to see him, even Lotor who awkwardly skulks in the back, they act like he’s a refreshing turn of season. Shiro sighs heavily while clasping his shoulders before Pidge shoves him aside. She launches up the vertical disparity between then, hugging him tightly around his neck. 

“Shit got _weird,_ ” she whispers in his ear. 

He just digs his fingers into her sides until she huffs out a disgruntled laugh. 

“Tell me about it,” he hums back. 

It takes him by surprise when Allura shakes Krolia’s hand and welcomes her aboard with a tired smile that bears no hesitation. She murmurs, “Any friend of Keith’s…” and trails off, the rest, ‘ _is obviously ours,’_ is implied. It’s a rare person who is made better while fighting a war. 

He makes introductions and hardly stumbles over the word _mother,_ they give each other a foundational summary of this past piece apart, and Coran mutters about how filthy it is.

Hunk’s just excused himself to start dinner when Krolia makes a vaguely apologetic gesture towards Allura, “I hate to ask, but… there’s probably a call I should make.” 

Keith starts to follow as Allura and Shiro lead her to the bridge but she stops him with an ironic expression and deadpans, “This is more of a solo mission. Light a candle for me.” 

Pidge dawdles in the ship-bay, poking at Keith’s Galran cruiser with a scanner that seems to have come from nowhere, so when Keith strolls out of the hanger, he finds that it’s just Lance beside him. 

“What’s with the…” Keith gestures to the miniature sentry mask hanging from a cord around his neck. 

“Oh!” Lance blushes and tugs at it absently, “Long story, but funny story! We had a good day at Galra HQ…You would have hated it.” 

He laughs before it registers as an insult, but Lance just grins and tilts his head, expression appraising and open. 

“There’s this thing my mom used to say, when my older brother would visit from college. That she felt better when all her kids were under one roof.” 

Keith scoffs and swats at Lance’s stupid necklace, “Am I your kid in this metaphor?” 

“We’re all the kids in this metaphor!” he retorts, “Especially now that we have another parent in the mix. It’s like we traded Science Dad for the purple lady-version of you!”

At one point during the short, near silent ride there, Keith had processed the fact that Krolia was sporting a tiny, jagged ponytail and knew, just _knew,_ Lance would never be able to resist. 

Keith blocks his arm easily on its way to his neck. 

Lance grins again, “There’s a lot of resemblance.” 

Keith shoves him off without any real force, “You’re an idiot.”

* 

It’s clear that it will take a while to get to know his mother. She answers what she wants when she wants and is more of a moving, sentient question mark than maternal figure. Her presence unbalances him when he catches it in his periphery, still not acclimated to her general existence.  

It doesn’t help that she’s even more uncertain, most likely just as clueless as he is on how to move forward when the past is an undead thing jogging at their heels

But the one thing he does know, so far, is that she’s not a liar. She said she wouldn’t leave him, and she hasn’t. 

“You know how it’ll be,” she tells him quietly their first night in the Castle, after her report to base, “How it works there.” The Blade isn’t a team, they don’t have a home. And they certainly do not have mothers. 

He finds that she’s another thing he’s not willing to lose. 

He didn’t have much on him beside his suit when they showed up, but all of his things, you know, the things that say _Keith_ instead of _body,_ are already here. It doesn’t take much for them to simply not leave. 

The war has kept churning, of course, an ever-present noise. Haggar’s power grows, the warlords beat their chests, and Lotor’s old lackeys keep popping up. Their days contain enough mayhem that he never gets the time to do much math. 

He’s playing video games with Lance the first time Kolivan contacts them with a request, a Blade asset compromised on a transport passing nearby. Krolia stands in the threshold of Lance’s door and smiles a tad wistfully at him. It strikes him that sitting crossed-legged in sweats with a controller in his hand is probably the only age-appropriate thing she’s ever seen him do.   

“It’s up to you,” Krolia tells him quickly, like she’s suddenly realized that asking your son on a dangerous interstellar mission hits a discordant tone against such a benign scene. 

“We should help, if we can,” he glances over to Lance who is studious studying the connection between his controller and its cord, then back to his mom, “We shouldn't leave them behind.” 

Lance jerks at that and looks at him oddly. 

“Save this round, we’ll finish it when I get back,” Keith says on his way out, but when Lance nods, he seems doubtful. 

*

Later, after he does come back, Lance looks so surprised and pleased that when Keith smears him at Killbot Phantasm 1, he’s sure Lance loses on purpose. 

“Next time, Kogane, I won’t go so easy on you,” Lance blusters and tosses his controller away. 

“Bring it!” he feels that invasive affection warming in his stomach when Lance turns away to hide a smile, “I’m not going anywhere, you jerk.” 

So Keith stays and the team is remade, or is reborn or something. Lance has his doubts but, well, so does Keith. Maybe they can be even now. 

They become a thing of their own making, him and Krolia with the others in white armor. They’re a double-edged sword, part Blade, part Voltron, just like the hybrid he is. They go on the missions they choose, sometimes all of them, sometimes just mother and son. 

Never too far, though, never for too long. And at the end of an assignment they ping the Castle and everyone sleeps under one roof. That’s important to him, that they trust he’s coming back. 

They make their own rules, don’t wear masks, and never leave someone behind. 

*

Another thing he knows about his mom now is that she is not super subtle, either. 

“I’m the last person you owe any answers to…” she pauses and coughs for a moment. Not a huge surprise since they’re both on their hands and knees crawling through an empty and abandoned Galran base’s dusty air vents. “But I gotta ask. What’s with the beanpole?” 

He stops, hand frozen in front of him mid-shuffle, and has just enough room to turn and fix her with an incredulous glare, “What’s with _what_?” 

She shrugs like everything’s normal, except her shoulders scrape the dirty duct ceiling, “I’ve just noticed it seems like a _thing-“_

“You want to talk about that _here?_ ” he swings his free hand in demonstration, his point made when it bounces off the metal siding. 

She makes a placating gesture, all _ok ok fine,_ and they continue the slow drag down the vent. 

He can’t help that he goes hot with mortification. But under that, honestly, he’s also unexpectedly happy. Being embarrassed by your mom’s benevolent prying is so cliche he never thought to want that for himself. It feels like luck, even though his life has been one absurd plot twist after another, his mom is still trying to bond with him about boys.

He stops and looks back at her again, “And where the hell did you pick up the term ‘beanpole’?” 

Krolia snorts out a short laugh and coughs again right after, “Your dad had a _lot_ of annoying sayings.” 

Maybe it’s the dark of the air duct, because they can’t quite look each other in the face, or because she just put him on the spot, but she tells him, right then and there, how she met his father. 

* 

The first time Keith traveled through a wormhole, a million years ago in Blue, surrounded by strangers, back when his future was still an unspooling thread, it left him hollowed out and disoriented. Like he’d just gone through a spin cycle in the washer. Since then, it’d become so commonplace it barely warranted acknowledgement anymore, the folding of time and space about as noteworthy as a new flavor of goo. 

The goo itself, too, and even nunvil, he’s grown so accustomed to the soft texture or biting bitter taste that it’s hard to remember a time when they weren’t in his diet. They’ve been in space too long, adapted too well, and it shows. If they ever go back to Earth, it’ll be as aliens. 

That being said, Keith doesn’t know if he’s relieved or bothered that he hasn’t become any more immune to Lance’s blood on his hands. 

It’s a bomb, of course, both literally and metaphorically. 

Keith watches the others fight from the corner of his eyes, just barely holding his own against Zethrid. They’re scattered around some outpost’s weapons laboratory, total destruction following as they rip the place apart and a timer counts down to who knows what kind of cataclysm. 

Pidge takes Ezor’s feet out from under her, and Keith sees the opening for the detonator the same time Lance does. He blocks Zethrid’s right hook just as Lance takes off across the room, skidding on the shiny, smooth floor in front of the console, bayard loose in his grip. 

Keith finally lands a kick that sends the giant woman into a dazed slump as Lance starts the shut-down protocol. That’s when a golden and black blur buzzes next to him, and Haggar appears in what had just been empty space. 

He sees Lance see her. Sees him decide between wrenching up his bayard to block the downward strike of her knife or finish disarming the bomb. Keith is sprinting to him even before his brain realizes he’s much too far away. 

Lotor gets there an instant before him, reengaging the witch with his own black blade. But Keith makes it in time to catch him, keeps his stance wide, knees slightly bent, and lifts with his legs. 

Keith is not in white, so the blood is hard to see against his chest, but it feels like enough that he knows Lance is dying, right now. He’s young and strong but shockingly vulnerable in that blue armor.

The fighting hasn’t skipped a beat, but he feels himself being pulled from the conflict anyway. Shiro screams, “Get him out of here!” and Allura cries, “Coran, do you copy? Prepare a pod  _now!”_ and Krolia hisses, “There’s still time, if we hurry.” 

As they dash back into the hanger she starts towards their cruiser, but his legs pivot away with a will of their own, “The Lions are faster.” 

It’s the kind of impulsive decision Lance would yell at him for, since he has no way of knowing it’ll work. But Lance isn’t around to knock sense into him, he’s silent, inert, and unsmiling. 

He has to hand Lance off to his mother when they get to Red’s cockpit, and settles himself into the pilot’s seat before any of his sudden panic can shine through. 

 _You,_ Red seems to say again, friendly yet not quite sure, like waiting in a threshold. But when he touches the console, she immediately reacts, leaping and snapping and halfway back to the Castle before he’s taken a full breath. 

 _I didn’t want it like this,_ he thinks sadly, knuckles white around the controls. 

He realizes he said that out loud when his mother replies gently, “I know what kind of man you are, Keith.” 

*

No one else shows up when Lance is due out, which feels pretty obvious. And Hunk says _he’s_ not subtle. 

He stands there with a cup of warmed Kaltenecker milk in one hand, Lance’s jacket draped over the other arm. Lance snorts numbly at the picture he must paint. He sways as he shrugs on his coat.

“How long was I in for?” Lance slurs. 

Keith laughs because it feels like the only way to deflate the balloon in his chest, “A day and a half. You got lucky evil-witch knives don’t have magic aim or something.”

He hands Lance the mug and they amble slowly towards the kitchen, aware from too many close-calls that the healing pods leave a hangover of sick, quaky hunger. 

The mice squeak gleefully and push a bowl of soup across the bar towards Lance as they enter, and he falls onto the stool before them. He waves a hand in the air apathetically until Keith passes him a spoon. 

He merely eats for a few moments, color creeping back into his cheeks, but still a little glassy-eyed. 

“So you flew Red,” he says suddenly. Keith is still pretty sure Lance was unconscious the entire frantic flight, but he’s not all that shocked he knows anyway.

Keith shrugs, “I was covered in your blood, she probably couldn’t tell the difference.” 

Lance just rolls his eyes, mood impossible to read while he’s a bit hunched over, eating carefully. 

“It wasn’t the same,” Keith attempts to explain, “Like…clothes that don’t fit. It didn’t feel right.” 

Lance exhales heavily. 

“Is that why you’re leaving again?” he asks, voice even, and sits straighter. 

Keith rears up, arms akimbo, “Who said anything about leaving?” 

Lance drops the spoon in a gesture of pique and it clangs on the counter, “C’mon, I’m not stupid! I know how you feel about Red, and then I did that almost-dying _thing_ we keep doing to each other, and now you’re here waiting to talk to me alone which you always do when-“

“That thing,” Keith breaks in, _where we get lucky and would dismantle the universe to save each other and know if we can’t we will be irrevocably changed,_ “Are we gonna keep doing that?” 

Lance gets the cautious, closed off look Keith hates on his face, and crosses his arms. 

“If you stay, yeah, we’re definitely going to keep doing that,” he states defiantly. 

“Yeah, well, if I leave someone else carries you back.” 

He reaches across the counter and tugs lightly at the hair at Lance’s neck. It’s getting a little long. “And that’s worse, you jerk.”

* 

It only takes youth a few days to catch up to the whatever the healing pod left behind. Lance recovers like wires being crossed, all sparks and non-stop chatter. He favors his left side so slightly most of them probably miss it. 

He says he’s still cold from the pod, though, which is impossible, and takes to walking around the Castle with his bed’s comforter draped over his shoulders. Keith finds it needlessly endearing, excessive even, but fighting that means dwelling on it so he just lets Lance win at video games, instead. 

Like the war, things have shifted in an unforeseeable way. It reminds him of the first time Red opened up, as if he had finally thrown the right tumblers and unlocked something that had never been seen. He tries to give Lance his space, in case all this invasive affection is one-sided and Keith’s been gradually permitting facets of this idea to take shape in a state of total delusion. But Lance doesn’t take it, rather he forges on taking up Keith’s. 

“So your mom calls me ‘beanpole,’” he says slowly one night, wrapping the ever-present blanket around his torso and legs in a loose burrito. 

“Then we know she’s not blind,” he volleys back immediately. 

Lance gapes at him for a second before doubling over in a belly laugh, letting himself collapse onto the floor.

Keith chuckles too, unintentionally, and doesn’t jump too much when their legs brush. 

“I’d bet no nicknames for you yet,” Lance seems sure. 

He doesn’t know if a day will ever come when he and his mother have effortless terms of endearment, not when every conversation holds revelations and most of their time is spent with a weapon in hand. It’s enough that they’ve let his dad’s odd, southern sayings reenter their vocabulary.

“No need,” he’s honestly pretty satisfied with the progress they’d made, “To be fair, I still call her ‘Krolia’ most of the time.” 

Lance nods with distracted contemplation and switches on the console, “You’re not like a naturally _nicknamey_ dude, anyway.” 

“Lance,” Keith huffs and levels a disbelieving smirk at him, “You call me ‘Mullet’ more than my real name.” 

Lance just shrugs that off and settles against the wall beside him, their shoulders suddenly pressed together, Keith’s thigh against Lance’s blanketed one _._

He meets his gaze and, even before he speaks, Keith can see the muted _it’s different_ that they’ve both tried so hard not to address, “I mean for everyone else. We both know this won’t work if I take you too seriously.” 

Keith’s head swivels to look at him fully, trying to decipher his meaning around the electrical storm lighting up his belly. The scared, fox-in-a-trap, child in him shrinks under Lance’s wary stare and tells him to flee. That Lance has poked at the _thing_ between them, acknowledged it aloud so he can’t roll it away like all the other truths he’s still too young and unsure to face.

But more of him, the parts that have changed and hardened and learned what it was to have something to return to, is grateful that he’s allowed this cliche too. The dropped-out-floor feeling when you might get everything you wanted.  

Lance chews his lip and fiddles with the controller while the system takes forever to boot up, still so close, always, and even though he tries to hide it, Keith recognizes the closed off expression he adopts when he’s preparing for the worst from him. 

He can never know what that look does to Keith, how it makes the levies around his tongue buckle, compels Keith to articulate things long ignored, “It’ll work. We will. Because I take you too seriously. I actually listen to you.”  

Lance smiles, small at first, but it grows quickly. The noise he makes isn’t quite a laugh, more punched out exhalation that Keith feels on his face. He thinks about how little he misses the desert when Lance’s fingers find their way into his hair. 

The first kiss is barely there, really just the potential of it, but Keith is the one who closes the distance between them, deciding impulsively that it was time he took up more of Lance’s space. The second is a little firmer, Keith’s hand moves on its own to trace the shape of his ribcage and Lance’s legs shift in vain against the blanket. 

When Keith pulls away, the palm of his hand suddenly on Lance’s cheek, his thumb brushing first against his chin, then under one eye, his brain feels quiet for the first time since Earth. The constantly suppressed buzz of uninvited thoughts dim under the low sound of their breathing and the video game’s menu music.   

“If I go somewhere right now, do you trust that I’ll come back?”

“What, _now_?” Lance looks more personally affronted than hurt but Keith has already sprung up and slipped through the door.

It takes barely a minute at a normal pace to go from Lance’s room to his own and back, but Lance looks as surprised as the first time when Keith returns. 

He is a complicated man of small gestures. He takes the punch, he carries him back, he stays.

Keith shakes out his own blanket and nudges Lance with his foot. “Unwrap,” he instructs, “It’s warmer if we double up.”  

Later, they crawl into bed together in a silence that calms down incrementally, settling under the weight of two layers, Keith’s promise to stay extending even here. Side by side they’re almost the exact same size, all long angles softened by night clothes and radiating warmth. They seem even. 

“Should this’ve waited until one of us hadn’t just almost died?” he wonders sleepily, his voice and lips brushing against Lance’s. 

Lance chuckles and presses a soft kiss on the corner of his mouth, one large hand splayed on his back, “That’s all the time, dummy.” 

*

He dreams about Earth, but it’s too abstract and far away for plot, simply snatches of desert cliffs, a southern drawl, a tall boy in class. 

When he wakes, Lance is blinking groggily at him, but level, unbothered. Open and curious. 

“I promised Shiro we’d run the decks first thing,” he murmurs in lieu of ‘good morning.’ 

Lance scoffs a tad dramatically, “Well, I certainly didn’t.” 

The arm around his waist tightens until Lance’s face is pressed against his neck. 

“Give me ten minutes,” his tone seems final and Keith takes it seriously.

He thinks about the rest of them, the team, waking up around the Castle, together under one roof. That seems even more critical now, not just for the war, but for the kind of man he wants to be. He swears to never do the math again, because straight numbers couldn’t begin to account for everything they’ve become.

He only gives Lance five more minutes, but he leaves his blanket there.

 

**Author's Note:**

> this thing was a real labor of love, please drop me a review.


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